The following images were taken with a final production Canon EOS 450D / Rebel XSi, running firmware 1.0.4 and equipped with the standard EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens.

The EOS 450D / XSi was set to Large Fine JPEG quality, Auto White Balance, Evaluative metering and the Standard Picture Style; High ISO Noise Reduction and Highlight Priority were set to their default OFF and Disable settings respectively. Image Stabilisation was enabled for all these handheld shots.

The crops are taken from the original files, reproduced at 100% and saved in
Adobe Photoshop CS2 as JPEGs with the default Very High quality preset, while
the resized images were made in Photoshop CS2 and saved with the default High
quality preset. The three crops are typically taken from far left, central and
far right portions of each image.

This first shot was taken with the 450D and the 18-55mm zoomed-out to an equivalent of 29mm. It was bright and the sensitivity set to 100 ISO, so this represents ideal conditions.

The crops reveal a smooth image with no undesirable artefacts to worry about, although like the EOS 40D and the Sony A350, the sharpening levels are quite modest by default. This of course gives you greater flexibility later, but you may still prefer to increase the in-camera sharpening by a notch.

Our next shot was taken of an approaching boat. The lens was zoomed-into its maximum focal length, the AF set to AI Servo and the sensitivity increased to 200 ISO.

The 450D's AF system tracked the approaching boat without difficulty.

Pixel-peeping at 100% reveals the increase in sensitivity hasn't had a detrimental effect on the image quality, unlike the equivalent shot from our Sony A350 gallery which exhibits a faint smattering of noise.

Our second indoor shot was taken with the sensitivity increased to 800 ISO.

As you'd expect, there's a decrease in quality when viewed at 100%, but we'd say the result is preferable to that of the Sony A350, and you can still apply sharpening without greater revealing the noise artefacts.

The built-in stabilisation has also eliminated any camera shake in this exposure.

Our final indoor shot was taken with the sensitivity increased to 1600 ISO.

The crops reveal a significant increase in noise and processing artefacts with a softening of ultimate detail.

Like most DSLRs these days, you'd prefer to use the 450D at 1600 ISO only when you really needed to, but again we'd say the quality at this sensitivity has the edge over the equivalent shot taken with the Sony A350.

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